Donating artefacts and documents to Newry and Mourne Museum
Donations of objects and documents by the public are pivotal to the work of a museum as it seeks to tell the stories of the past and help us understand our heritage.
Objects are also employed in education work to bring the past alive for children and to stimulate memory and share personal histories in reminiscence work.
Guided by its Collections Development Policy, Newry and Mourne Museums collects objects and documents relating to the Newry and Mourne area, including south Armagh, Newry and south Down. The Museum’s collecting policy also respects Newry’s historic hinterland of Rathfriland, Poyntzpass, Markethill and Omeath.
Making a Donation
If you think you have an object or document which you would like to donate, please contact us. You can either bring your item to the Museum, or if you have a number of objects, museum staff will visit your home to assess them.
As an Accredited Museum we work to national standards of collection care and practice. Items are accepted or declined according to guidelines set out in the Museum Association’s Code of Ethics for Museums and our defined collections policy.
If we accept your object
If your object or document matches ethical guidelines and our collecting criteria, you will be requested to sign a Museum Object Entry Form. Your item will then be accessioned or accepted into the Museum Collection.
Please do not be disappointed if your item does not go on display immediately. Our main exhibitions are revised periodically, and your object may also be used in one of our temporary exhibitions. Even if your object goes into storage, it will always be available to the public for research.
We may decide that our educational activities or reminiscence work would benefit from your object. If this is so, the object, with your consent, will not be accessioned but will join our ‘handling’ collections to be used by school children or reminiscence groups.
If you would like to donate an object or document, have any queries, or would like to see a copy of our Collections Development Policy, please contact the Assistant Curator or Curator at Newry and Mourne Museum, or contact us enquiry form.
